Tag Archives: Mobile

Birmingham has seen one of its most tumultuous years in its media landscape. The last 365 days have brought layoffs, departures, closings and a few victories among local outlets.

It was 1 year ago today that the New York Times scooped New Orleans’ venerable Times-Picayune on its own impending upheaval: layoffs, a drop to publishing three times a week and the formation of two new companies.

The following day (May 24), owner Advance Publications announced hurriedly what Times-Picayune staffers had already learned online. In addition, the New Jersey-based chain rolled out a similar Alabama-wide strategy for the Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times and the Press-Register of Mobile.

Brian Cauble (@briancauble) is the co-owner of Appsolute Genius, an iPhone application development company in Birmingham. His other interests include promoting local entrepreneurship through Birmingham Entrepreneur, participating in social media and a huge attachment to college football.

Josh: My experience was initially good, but then, every time I clicked a Web link, I would be taken out of the app making for a poor experience.

Brian: My overall experience was mixed, but mostly positive. The app was laid out well and easy to navigate, but it didn’t have enough content.

Do you get the sense that this is a custom app, or a “skinned” app for various sister outlets?

Josh: This custom app was created using a third-party library called Titanium. [Note from developer: The latest version was built as a native app in Objective-C.]

Brian: I believe this was a custom app.

Attractions list (left); details on McWane Science Center.

As a news consumer, what did you like? What would you add?

Josh: It contains a lot of valuable information for first-time visitors of Birmingham. I’d add videos to the Top 10 attractions to enhance the user experience.

Brian: I thought the photos were the best part of the app. Although I understand that it is a Top 10 app, I believe it should have more categories.

As an app developer, what did you like? How would you improve it?

Josh: I initially liked the app, but after using it for a while, I noticed that it is just a link app. A lot of the information has to be accessed outside of the application, and so my experience suffered. [Note: Latest version opens links within app. See additional note at end of review.] I’d improve this app by opening links within the app and by adding an e-mail contact tab for feedback. Another helpful feature would be a map that would allow users to see the locations of the top Birmingham attractions.

Brian: I liked the navigation of the app. However, I would add more categories such as restaurants, nightlife and family. I would also improve the look of the information screens. The look could be improved by using images and a custom background. [Note: Latest version has different color scheme and backgrounds.]

Since it’s a free app, would you pay money for it? How much? Why or why not?

Josh: I would not pay money for this app. It does not contain enough information.

Brian: No, I would not pay for the app. The main reason is that it doesn’t offer enough functionality.

Note: Reviewers used the previous version of this app. Updated version changed look of certain pages, but navigation and functionality remained the same. Screenshots are from the latest version.

Brian Cauble (@briancauble) is the co-owner of Appsolute Genius, an iPhone application development company in Birmingham. His other interests include promoting local entrepreneurship through Birmingham Entrepreneur, participating in social media and a huge attachment to college football.

Brian: The overall experience was mixed. It was a very simple app that essentially only showed the story. However, it had no categorization of stories, which I found to be limiting.

Josh: Clunky.

Do you get the sense that this is a custom app, or a “skinned” app for various sister outlets?

Brian: I think this is an app developed for all the Biz Journals.

Josh: This could be a skinned app, but I get the sense that it is a custom app.

As a news consumer, what did you like? What would you add?

Brian: I liked that it sized the articles to fit on my screen properly. I would definitely add categories for the news stories.

Josh: I like that I can access the Birmingham Business Journal on my iPhone, but the user experience was horrible. I would redesign this application, because I had a much better experience on the mobile version of the Web site.

As an app developer, what did you like? How would you improve it?

Brian: This app is extremely simple. It delivers the news and lets you e-mail the stories, but that is about it. I would add a better organizational structure and more options for sharing stories.

Josh: I didn’t like anything in this application. The interface was not designed very well, and my experience suffered greatly. Tip for improvement: Use the New York Times iPhone app as inspiration on how this app should be redesigned.

Since it’s a free app, would you pay money for it? How much? Why or why not?

Brian: I would not pay for this app.

Josh: I would not pay 1 cent for it. Redesign the app, and then we’ll see if I will pay for it.

Brian Cauble (@briancauble) is the co-owner of Appsolute Genius, an iPhone application development company in Birmingham. His other interests include promoting local entrepreneurship through Birmingham Entrepreneur, participating in social media and a huge attachment to college football.

Brian: The overall experience was good. This was also a very simple app that allowed you to listen to the two radio stations at UAB and get news about BlazeRadio.

Do you get the sense that this is a custom app, or a “skinned” app for various sister outlets?

Josh: This is definitely a custom app.

Brian: It felt like a custom app.

As a radio consumer, what did you like? What would you add?

Josh: I like that the music plays quickly and easily. I would add more UAB specific information about BlazeRadio such as names of the DJs.

Brian: I’m not sure there is much to add. The app serves the purpose of the station.

As an app developer, what did you like? How would you improve it?

Josh: I like the simple interface. I’d put a feature into the app to enabling sharing of the radio on social networks like Twitter and Facebook. I would also add a way for users to e-mail feedback to the radio station.

Brian: I liked that the streaming was good. It wasn’t choppy at all. You could improve it by offering a better music selection and maybe a sports-only station.

Since it’s a free app, would you pay money for it? How much? Why or why not?

Josh: I would not pay money for this application because it is not feature complete.

Brian Cauble (@briancauble) is the co-owner of Appsolute Genius, an iPhone application development company in Birmingham. His other interests include promoting local entrepreneurship through Birmingham Entrepreneur, participating in social media and a huge attachment to college football.

More and more TV viewers are seeing the news, not from traditional 5-6-10 p.m. broadcasts, but from online and other sources. Two Birmingham stations have custom apps for the iPhone (which are also compatible with the iPod Touch and soon-to-arrive iPad).

Brian: Overall, the experience was mixed. The interface is clean and understandable, but features such as sharing stories are very awkward.

Do you get the sense that this is a custom app, or a “skinned” app for TV station affiliates?

Josh: This application could be skinned to various TV stations. I would recommend that other TV stations use this type of application for their news.

Brian: This definitely feels like a skinned app. It seems like an app intended to be used by many affiliates with minor changes.

As a news consumer, what did you like? What would you add?

Josh: I liked the main categories listed in each tab: news, videos, weather and traffic. Those are the first categories I would look for in an iPhone news application. I liked that no ads were in this application. [Note: A later upgrade has added advertisements, as shown in the screenshots, taken after the review.]

Brian: I liked the ability to have sports and movie information. I would add more local video content for sports and traffic accidents.

As an app developer, what did you like? How would you improve it?

Josh: I had a great user experience with this application! I love the use of the tab bar control to separate the news categories! The only thing that would improve this application would be the Three20 icon menu used in the iPhone Facebook application; this would allow more categories on the front screen when the application starts.

Brian: Not much. The app has way too basic of a look and feel. I would improve the aesthetics and allow users to customize which topics are most important to them.

Since it’s a free app, would you pay money for it? How much? Why or why not?

Josh: I’d pay 99 cents for this application.

Brian: I would not pay for it. It would need two features to be worth paying for. First, it needs to be customizable. People want customizable news content from a local source. Second, it needs push notifications. People would like to be notified when breaking local news happens.

Brian Cauble (@briancauble) is the co-owner of Appsolute Genius, an iPhone application development company in Birmingham. His other interests include promoting local entrepreneurship through Birmingham Entrepreneur, participating in social media and a huge attachment to college football.

More and more TV viewers are seeing the news, not from traditional 5-6-10 p.m. broadcasts, but from online and other sources. Two Birmingham stations have custom apps for the iPhone (which are also compatible with the iPod Touch and soon-to-arrive iPad).

Do you get the sense that this is a custom app, or a “skinned” app for TV station affiliates?

Brian: I know that it is a skinned app, but it has the feel of a custom app.

Josh: I think this can be a skinned app. It seems that only a few view images and data have to be changed for this app to be used for another news station.

As a news consumer, what did you like? What would you add?

Brian: The organization was really well done. I found it easy to navigate. I would add the ability to customize the categories.

Josh: I liked the different types of news in this application. There was everything from horoscopes to video news. I wouldn’t add any else to the news.

As an app developer, what did you like? How would you improve it?

Brian: I think the app is laid out well and very attractive. The video quality could be improved a bit. I would allow users to log in to Facebook or Twitter and store that login to make sharing easier.

Josh: As an app developer, I am very disappointed in this application. It seems like the developer spent too much time designing the top menu bar. Also the top menu bar was horribly placed at the top of the screen; it would be much easier to navigate if it were placed at the bottom. The rest of the app did not get as much attention as the top menu bar did, and so my overall user experience suffered. I would also remove all ads to improve this application.

Since it’s a free app, would you pay money for it? How much? Why or why not?

Brian: I would pay as much as $1.99 for it. It is a much better experience than a mobile Web site.

Brian Cauble (@briancauble) is the co-owner of Appsolute Genius, an iPhone application development company in Birmingham. His other interests include promoting local entrepreneurship through Birmingham Entrepreneur, participating in social media and a huge attachment to college football.

Mobile NBC affiliate Local 15 (WPMI) has tweeted its way into trouble. A billboard showing off the station’s live headlines from its Twitter account provided this unfortunate juxtaposition, shown above in this photo captured by a driver.

The headline, “3 Accused of Gang Rape in Monroeville,” sits next to the smiling trio of anchors.

“It has been a great 13 years. Everything from Tinker Fob to Jimmy Blake to Bettye Fine to LaLa and every crazy thing in between. It has been my great honor to cartoon for the people of Birmingham, Jefferson County and Alabama. I hope you have liked it as much as I have.”

• Kurt Vantosky is the new vice president of advertising. He was previously at the Tacoma (Wash.) News Tribune and the Anchorage Daily News. He told the News:

“I think the strong editorial commitment — its history and its continued belief of being the voice of the community — drew me to The Birmingham News.”

• Perhaps most intriguing is this item, sent to us by a News insider. Birmingham native Ricky Mathews is the new president and publisher of two Advance Publications properties, the (Mobile) Press-Register and the Mississippi Press in Pascagoula. (Amusingly enough, his name is misspelled in the announcement story.) He served in the same capacity at the Sun Herald in Gulfport and Biloxi, Miss.

But his job description doesn’t end there, as Mathews will also serve in a newly created position …

“Mathews was also named president of Advance Alabama/Mississippi and will assume oversight responsibility for the Birmingham News and the Huntsville Times, in addition to the Press-Register and Mississippi Press.”

What, if anything, does this mean for the ailing Birmingham News? Can anyone weigh in?

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Welcome to Media of Birmingham, a news and information site about journalism, advertising, public relations, new media and marketing based in Birmingham, Ala. The site went online in 2006, and the group behind it was founded in 2003.